a beautiful music experience

Yesterday was not a good night for sailing. I crashed badly in the USS and SL was rather laggy. As I was giving up I friend invited me to a music event at the beautiful Renaissance Club. The club is located in the Southern Continent, on an island near the Korean Canal, not too far away from Aurora Town.



Kiaranne Flanagan and Lyn Carlberg were performing there and their singing was very beautiful. But what was really surprising - and I did not believe it was possible - was that Kia was in the United States, while Lyn was in the United Kingdom.

They did so by mixing streams (basically the streams are in a chain where each player adds his voice and only the last one is fed to SL) and despite some minor flaws they were really great.



It was a great experience and a lot of fun. Congratulations to Kia and Lyn and thanks to my friend Sazzy who invited me there.

w

No sailing yesterday

I tried to sail again yesterday. The idea was to reach the sims in the far South of the USS, south of Sailors Cove, but I crashed almost immediately. There is quite a dangerous point, just out of the gate of the Hollywood sim at the intersection of four sims. Intersections are always dangerous and should be avoided but that one is particulrly dangerous. It must be the 3rd/4th time I get caught there.

I was stacked right at the intersection and I kept crashing every time I tried to TP away. Eventually I logged in at home instead of at the last location and I was able to get myself free.

In the meanwhile I got an IM that my flying fizz had been found in the Blake Sea - Windlass sim, many many sims away from the crashing point. I tp'ed there to recover the boat and found myself in a quite gorgeous tropical island.



After thanking the avie that contacted me and chatting a bit, I decided I liked the landscape there and since there were beach beds and torpical fruit drinks available I decided to relax there a bit




Aianna joined me there for a while and we had some fun when a funny owl avie piloting a cute submarine came manouvering. It really looked like he was trying to make us admire his ship and behaved more like a peacock than a owl :))

My SL evening ended with a highly emotional event where lady Aletheia Jacobus read some of her beutiful poems. Listening to Lady Aletheia is a powerful and fantastic experience: her poetry is beautiful and her reading skills are among the best I have listened to.





Have a happy friday and a good weekend

W

Fast Sailing

Not really much to add to what I already said in the past days. This time I took the Little Star (a fast Flying Fizz) for some sailing at full speed and I thought to share a couple of pictures that I particularly like. Not easy to take imagest with this boat. She is so fast that it usually does not give the surroundings time to fully rezz :)



Fair Winds

W

third day of sailing

For the third day in a row I spent my SL evening getting acquantied with the new sailing area. This time Princess kept me company aboard the Star of Faeria.



We left the beautiful Sailors Cove, where I had landed the night before, and headed north toward the portion of Blake Sea going between the Sailing Sims. We turned east and sailed on the border between the Blake Sea and the sims around Hollywood.



We header in the direction of the Nantucket Yacht Club, which is a a really lovely area and provides a great view, not without facing a nasty crash on out way. Fortunately in the USS it is possible to rezz almost anywhere so it was easy to restart from where we crashed. (not so in the Blake Sea. One need a map or rezzing areas)



After boarding the NYC we headed straight south (I'd like the wind to be a bit more stable in the Blake sea. There is a lot of difference between the wind in it and in the USS) and we boarded the coast of Nautilus until Nautilus City. We ended out trip in the canal going straight into the heart of Nautilus City. There are some spectacular buildings in that area.



Before starting the trip, I spent some time looking at the much improved SL map on the slurl.com site looking for a route from the Nautilus area to the Corsica continent. I do not think it is possible: all the potential passages look blocked, but I may still have a close look. I think a NE route offers the best opportunities. I'll keep you informed :)

Fair Winds

W

more images from the Blake Sea and the USS

Yesterday I took a new cruise into the Blake Sea, this time using the Morning Star, and taking the ship into the USS as well. Lord Lisle was briefly with me, before his pilot nature took over and he decided to fly in the area, and after him Aurora joined me and kept me company. We went by the Hollywood sim, where I showed Aurora the famous statue of the drowned thas she did not know and after that we headed south to Sailors Cove.



It is a bit strange to find Sailors Cove in the SE portion of the region while it used to be in the northwestern part, but I guess this is Second Life :) An institute of dynamic geography is needed :)

I love Sailors Cove. It is such a lovely place and I like it more and more every time I visit. I am very tempted to rent a docking place there for one of the small boats. The Star of Faeria maybe.



Maybe tonight I'll take there one of the small fast boats. The Little Star would be fun !

Fair Winds

W

Exploring the Blake Sea

Yesterday evening, looking at report and announcements about the opening of the Blake Sea, following the moving of the USS I took the Battlestar on the eastern edge of Nautilus City (where it is possible to rezz) and I headed to the new waters.



I have mixed feelings about this operation. It is surely a wonderful opportunity for all those who love maritime activities in SL and expecially sailing. And in the past weeks I have been so attracted by the idea that I have started to look at the prices of small seaside plots to be able to have a base near this wonderful area (don't! they are simply outrageous, in the order of 100k for a 512 plot). And I still playing with the idea to rent at least a docking space somewhere in the USS for one of the small boats.



But these same thoughts have also made me think of the great unbalance this operation has brought into SL. It is very clear that the lands aroung the Blake Sea, both the mainland in the larger Nautilus continent, and the private estate of the USS are more equal than the others. There is no match between a seaside parcel in the original mainland or in the Southern Continent and one close to the Blake Sea. And no other estate will ever be able to offer access the same amount of world that the USS have now. I love Beek Haven for instance, and the Sea of Antiquity, and I used to sail a lot in the water of the elven lands. But there is no match honestly. They are still great for roleplaying but they have become very small for fun sailing. This new situation will be (and already is) reflected in the value of the properties and of the commercial spaces located in the different areas.



Aside from this consideration, that I think are worth keeping in mind when looking at the way SL will be evolving in the coming months, the area is surely a lot of fun for all those that love sailing in SL. I did not even get into the USS, just a quick round trip to the eastern edge and back, and it took about one hour. I met many people with boats of all classes, and the Battlestar was a lot successful, with some people coming onboard for a visit :)

I even saw several planes flying over the area, and at one moment I crossed this beautiful airship.



I did not take a great care in taking pictures. The evening were crowded in SL and the lag was bad enough, so objects were rezzing slowly but I was many spots worth another visit and a better photo coverage :)

until the next visit ...

W

Blog template

I changed the template of the blog to a dark backround. I am playing with different free templates on my test blog - even if I haven't found the ideal one yet - and I found that the pictures look much better on the black background. So I decided for a change as long as I do not have the new one online. Don't you find that the images look much batter ? After all mine is mainly a photoblog

I hope my visitors enjoy :)

W

P.S. What ? Somobody asking if the new style reflects a darker mood? What an idea ! Is there any reason for that ?

Virtual Africa

Have you ever wished to visit the Serengeti ? Until you can do so you can get very close to the experience visiting Virtual Africa in SL.



This is a beautiful region, made of 4 (soon to be 5) sims where the African ecosystem, culture and traditions are on display, realized with great passion and care.



I found the place jumping randomly from blogs to tweets and, at last, I saw a LM in a tweet, with an invitation to visit the place. I followed the LM and I found myself in this beautiful natural paradise. I was greeted almost immediately by Alanagh Recreant, one of the souls behind the project and a Capetown resident in RL.



Alanagh took me around on a balloon tour where I got a great felling of the place. You just need to immerse yourself a bit on the experience and you really believe to be flying over the savana.



There are wild animals areas, beautiful landscapes, camping areas, themed platforms in the sky, rivers to navigate, cultural centers and a market where one can find African outfits.



It was an overall great experience. More tours are available with stations to follow all over the place and I definitely plan to go back there for more exploration.



Oh .. I was forgetting: when you are there set your environment to sunset. The warm colors of the sunset light are perfect to enhance an already gorgeous experience.

Have fun ... and remember to pet a lion :)

W

the telescope

My friend Matty asked me to build a telescope a few days ago, to complement the solar system model. So I started working on it and now it is complete. You can see it in the picture. It is not too bad, what do you think ?



I still have to add a menu to make it move. Presently one has to give commands in the chat window. SL is not letting me work on scripts at present so I will postpone that.

I will place it in the Bright Star Gallery in the next days :)

bye for now :)

W

Sunday's events

Sundays are always full of events and I always have a lot of fun jumping from sim to sim.



I started at the Molaskey's Pub , one of the first places I discovered in SL and still one of my favorite ones. The Pub has always event packed Sundays at a time very European friendly and I always try to get there. During these holidays they are having their shows on a beautiful ice rink and yesterday the evening started with the wonderful voice of Cylindrian Rutabaga.





It was a great hour and after a while I tp'ed Aianna to the concert as well.

The evening was supposed to go on with another favorite of the pub and of SL live music, Maximillion Kleene, but SL was not playing fair and logins were disabled (very close to 80k concurrent attendance yesterday) and Maximillion could not get in.



A friend of Aianna's, Jaynine Scarborough, was starting her own show at the same time though, so we TP'ed at a lovely club, the Thousand Rooms Bar, to listen to her.



Jaynine is another great voice and her show was great, even if she had been drafted for the show unexpectedly at the last moment and without much time to get ready.



I also loved the atmosphere of the club, that I tried to capture, at least partially, in the images.



The next event was at Tombstone, a western RP area, where the Backintime were having their first show after the holidays.



I love the Backintime : Raymond and Annelee Frog are a couple and perform both in RL and SL. If you look at their profiles you can see their avies are identical to their RL selves. They re-enact and performs songs and stories from the XIX century, especially around the US Civil war era.



At my midnight, 3pm SLT, I was supposed to go to Antiquity for the Concert in the Park there, that has become another of my Sunday habits, but a friend told me that the concert had been cancelled. However a new poetry reading event had its debut yesterday at the Green Fairy in Winterfell Absinthe, so I went there. It was a lovely event that promises to become a cornerstone of Winterfell social life. Eiden Ember and Star Fairymedow have been the souls behind the event and I look forward to the next ones.

I did not take images, but I plan to do it in the next weeks. As I did not take pictures of the last event of the day: Aianna's Bedtime Stories, at the Aurora Town Tiny Village. Aianna was very entertaining as usual. She is reading from Kipling's Jungle Book these weeks and yesterday she read Toomai of the Elephants.
It was a great end of the weekend.

Ask me next Sunday if you feel bored. I am sure I can take you to a show. :))


Have fun

W

Princess First reading

Princess Ivory had her reading debut yesterday at MilkWood reading A Child's Christmas in Wales. She was great! Princess has a great voice and a great inflection and it was quite a beautiful event .

A great beginning of the year.

W

Happy 2009